Charles Castonguay is a retired associate professor of Mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 and Statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 at the University of Ottawa

University of Ottawa

The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...

.

Biography

A native English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 speaker, he was sent by his parents to a French Catholic primary school. He took his first English courses in high school. Enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces to pursue university-level studies, he obtained a masters of mathematics from the University of Ottawa. During the three years of his military service, he was affected to the headquarters in Ottawa as counsellor in mathematics and taught to young officers at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean

Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean

Royal Military College Saint-Jean is a Canadian military academy located on the site of Fort Saint-Jean , originally built 1666, which is now part of the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, 40 km south of Montreal, Quebec...

.

After his service, he began teaching mathematics and statistics at the University of Ottawa and registered at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 to study the philosophy of mathematics

Philosophy of mathematics

The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics and to understand the place of...

 and epistemology. The subject of his doctoral thesis was "meaning" and "existence" in mathematics. He obtained his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in 1971. (The thesis was published in 1972 and 1973.)

In 1970, he participated to a meeting of the Parti Québécois

Parti Québécois

The Parti Québécois is a centre-left political party that advocates national sovereignty for the province of Quebec and secession from Canada. The Party traditionally has support from the labour movement. Unlike many other social-democratic parties, its ties with the labour movement are informal...

 in the Laurier riding

Laurier (electoral district)

Laurier was a federal electoral district in Quebec, Canada, that was represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1935 to 1988.It was created in 1933 from parts of Laurier—Outremont and Saint-Denis ridings....

. René Lévesque

René Lévesque

René Lévesque was a reporter, a minister of the government of Quebec, , the founder of the Parti Québécois political party and the 23rd Premier of Quebec...

 was the speaker of this meeting intended to inform English speakers of the party's Sovereignty-Association project. After that, he militated for this party until the election of 1976

Quebec general election, 1976

The Quebec general election of 1976 was held on November 15, 1976 to elect members to National Assembly of the Province of Quebec, Canada. It was one of the most significant elections in Quebec history, rivalled only by the 1960 general election, and caused major repercussions in the rest of Canada...

.

Partly to understand himself as a francized

Francization

Francization or Gallicization is a process of cultural assimilation that gives a French character to a word, an ethnicity or a person.-French Colonial Empire:-Francization in the World:...

 English speaker, he took great interest in the analysis of the linguistic behaviours of populations and language policies

Language policy

Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...

. He became a specialist on the subject of language shift

Language shift

Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...

s and completed several studies on behalf of Office québécois de la langue française

Office québécois de la langue française

The Office québécois de la langue française is a public organization established on March 24, 1961 by the Liberal government of Jean Lesage...

.

On January 25, 2001, he took an active part in a symposium held by the commission of the Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec

Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec

The Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec is the name of a commission set up by the government of Quebec on June 29, 2000...

 (Les enjeux démographiques et l’intégration des immigrants). Thereafter, he co-authored a book criticizing its final report.

Since 2000, he collaborates to the Dossier linguistique in the newspaper L'aut'journal

L'aut'journal

L’aut’journal is a French language newspaper distributed in Quebec freely and through subscription. It was founded in 1984 by political scientist and journalist Pierre Dubuc, and as of 2004 has a circulation of 35,000 copies....

. He participated to the foundation of the Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique in 2008.

In English

Thesis

• Meaning and Existence in Mathematics, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1972, 159 pages (also New York: Springer, 1973)

Articles

• "Nation Building and Anglicization in Canada's Capital Region", in Inroads Journal, Issue 11, 2002, pp. 71–86
• "French is on the ropes. Why won’t Ottawa admit it ?", in Policy Options, volume 20, issue 8, 1999, pp. 39–50
• "Getting the facts straight on French : Reflections following the 1996 Census", in Inroads Journal, Issue 8, 1999, pages 57 to 77
• "The Fading Canadian Duality", in Language in Canada (ed. John R. Edwards), pp. 36–60, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 520 pages
• "Assimilation Trends among Official-Language Minorities. 1971-1991", in Towards the Twenty-First Century: Emerging Socio-Demographic Trends and Policy Issues in Canada, pp. 201–205, Federation of Canadian Demographers, Ottawa, 1996
• "The Anglicization of Canada, 1971-1981", in Language Problems and Language Planning, vol. 11, issue 1, Spring 1987
• "Intermarriage and Language Shift in Canada, 1971 and 1976", in Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer, 1982), pp. 263–277
• "The Economic Context of Bilingualism and Language Transfer in the Montreal Metropolitan Area", in The Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Aug., 1979), pp. 468–479 (with Calvin J. Veltman, Jac-Andre Boulet)
• "Why Hide the Facts? The Federalist Approach to the Language Crisis in Canada", in Canadian Public Policy, 1979
• "Opportunities for the Study of Language Transfer in the 1971 Census", in Paul Lamy (ed.), Language Maintenance and Language Shift in Canada: New Dimensions in the Use of Census Language Data, Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 1977, p. 63-73.
• "An Analysis of the Canadian Bilingual Districts Policy", in American Review of Canadian Studies, 1976

Other

• Transcript of a Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages hearing, recorded on April 28, 1998

In French

Studies

• Incidence du sous-dénombrement et des changements apportés aux questions de recensement sur l'évolution de la composition linguistique de la population du Québec entre 1991 et 2001 (Étude 3), Montréal: Office québécois de la langue française, September 26, 2005, 29 pages
• Les indicateurs généraux de vitalité des langues au Québec : comparabilité et tendances 1971-2001 (Étude 1), Montréal : Office québécois de la langue française, May 26, 2005, 48 pages
• La langue parlée au foyer : signification pour l’avenir du français et tendances récentes, Oral presentation given to a symposium held by the commission of the Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec
  Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec
  The Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec is the name of a commission set up by the government of Quebec on June 29, 2000...
  
  , January 25, 2001
• L'indicateur de développement humain de l'ONU : le concept et son usage, Sainte-Foy: Publications du Québec, 1995, 68 pages
• L'assimilation linguistique : mesure et évolution 1971-1986, Québec: Conseil de la langue française, 1994, 243 pages
• Exogamie et anglicisation dans les régions de Montréal, Hull, Ottawa et Sudbury, Québec: Centre international de recherche sur le bilinguisme, 1981